Climate Change HEALTH

Moving to a sustainable and carbon-neutral society is, ultimately, not about science but behaviour. Understanding the reasons why people choose to act (or not act) in a certain way, and how these choices can be positively influenced, is emerging as the key to tackling climate change and many of the myriad social and environmental issues currently confronting us. This article is a good summary (albeit a little dated now) of why people choose not to act.

The psychology of climate change: why we do nothing – The Ecologist

Well-publicised simple steps like using energy-saving light bulbs may be making it more difficult to prepare people for the bigger changes needed to tackle climate change, argue psychologists Upwards of 75 per cent of the general public, going by recent polls in the US and UK, say climate change is an important issue. But few of us are doing much to actually tackle the problem and reduce our own emissions. It is a conundrum that we are, perhaps belatedly, realising should be seen as a psychological one - (Tom Levitt 12th August, 2009).

Malaria Cycle

World Malaria Day is coming up later this month. The WHO is pushing hard to make sure that the gains in malaria control and reductions in malaria-related mortality seen over recent years are maintained in the current economic crisis.

The WHO says that malaria deaths in Africa have been cut by one third within the last decade. Outside of Africa, 35 out of 53 affected countries have reduced cases by 50% in the same time period. There have also been overall reductions in child mortality rates of around 20%.

Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership – World Malaria Day 2012 – Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria

The theme for World Malaria Day 2012 - “Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria” - marks a decisive juncture in the history of malaria control. Whether the malaria map will keep shrinking, as it has in the past decade, or be reclaimed by the malaria parasites, depends, to a great extent, on the resources that will be invested in control efforts over the next years.

Related articles

• Drug-Resistant Malaria Threatens Effort to Control Disease (voanews.com)
• Drug-resistant malaria is spreading and it could be a public health disaster (theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com)
• Travellers ‘need malaria warnings’ (confused.com)
• Super malaria strain on the rise! (rightways.wordpress.com)

climate change infographic - wwf's coral triangle program

Great infographic from the WWF – Coral Triangle program via Philanthrophy.com.

I like this image because it starkly presents us with two possible futures, based on the choice we make now.

Graphics like this convey a lot of information quickly, are attractive and appealing without being overwhelming, and are in an easy-to-share format for social networks.

Producers of such campaigns hope to inform and raise awareness, with the added attraction of generating backlinks and viral traffic.

The World Wildlife Fund uses the infographics it’s created to start conversations both online and off, says Paolo P. Mangahas, communications manager for the organization’s Coral Triangle program: “It’s like a calling card” – Philanthrophy.com

So why use infographics? According to Matthew Scharpnick (co-founder of non-profit infographic designer Elefint Designs) “…..statistics about an organization’s work aren’t as emotionally engaging as a photograph of a child in need. Numbers and percentages don’t appeal to our sense of compassion, and looking at graphs feels too academic to be enjoyable for most people.

Conservation Infographic: WWF's Sea Turtle / Coral Triangle Campaign

Consider these points while examining the climate change infographic above, or this one about sea turtles from the same series:

Related articles

• Lessons in coral reef survival from deep time (eurekalert.org)
• Fungus threat escalates for food, wildlife: scientists (seeddaily.com)

Some great resources here from WWF, with a common theme of behaviour change and ecopsychology. There are links to several interesting reports about what it really takes to motivate people to make effective change to move closer to sustainable development.

Strategies for Change – WWF UK

WWF’s Strategies for Change project re-examines some of the assumptions that underlie current environmental campaigning, and suggests new evidence-based responses. In particular, the project looks at the importance of collective social values in driving change, and at the ways those values are shaped.

There is a large body of empirical evidence that the values people hold and the goals people pursue are critically important in motivating ambitious change. A lot of current environmental campaigning seeks to identify areas where short-term financial self-interest or the pursuit of social status coincides with environmental aims. But this approach will almost certainly be inadequate to meet the environmental challenges we collectively confront. Fortunately, there is clear evidence that we can begin to engage with dominant values and sources of identity – and there are strategic interventions that the environment movement can make in order to do so. WWF’s Strategies for Change project marshals the empirical evidence for a values-based approach to environmental campaigning.

Reports
Different Politics, Same Planet – WWF UK 13 December 2011 - Different Politics, Same Planet: Values for Sustainable Development Beyond Left and Right argues that governments must lead a shift in values if we are to transition to a sustainable economy

Communicating bigger-than-self problems to extrinsically-oriented audiences. – WWF UK 25 January 2012 – This report, published jointly by Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN), CPRE, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and WWF-UK, summarizes the results of an interdisciplinary research project conducted jointly by researchers in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University and the Department of Linguistics at Lancaster University.

Think Of Me As Evil? Opening the ethical debates in advertising – WWF UK 24 October 2011 – Published by Public Interest Research Centre and WWF-UK, this report examines the evidence that commercial advertising could exacerbate the social and environmental problems that we collectively confront.

Common Cause – WWF UK 15 September 2010 – The case for working with our cultural values WWF-UK has partnered with four other organisations – Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN), Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Oxfam – to explore the central importance of cultural values in underpinning concern about the issues upon which we each work.

Meeting Environmental Challenges: The Role of Human Identity – WWF UK 17 June 2009 – This major new publication, written jointly with Professor Tim Kasser (Knox College, Illinois, and author of ‘The High Price of Materialism’) examines those fundamental aspects of human identity that operate to frustrate approaches to meeting environmental challenges.

Simple & painless – WWF UK – strategies for change 20 February 2009 – The limitations of spillover in environmental campaigning The comfortable perception that global environmental challenges can be met through marginal lifestyle changes no longer bears scrutiny. The cumulative impact of large numbers of individuals making marginal improvements in their environmental impact will be a marginal collective improvement in environmental impact. Yet we live at a time when we need urgent and ambitious changes.

The Natural Change Project – WWF UK 21 July 2009 – The Natural Change Project was developed by WWF Scotland as a new and innovative response to the challenge of sustainability and to the growing evidence that current environmental campaigns are not resulting in the depth of behaviour change necessary to address this challenge.

Weathercocks and signposts – WWF UK – Strategies, change, weathercock 1 April 2008 – WWF’s Strategies for Change Project is a new work stream which contributes to the growing debate about how best to effect environmentally-friendly behavioural change. In particular, the project examines the importance of our collective social values in driving behavioural change, and the ways in which such values are shaped.

Tim Lenton is the author of a well-known paper on tipping points. He has recently stated that Arctic sea ice may have passed a tipping point in 2007, and iceless summers may occur much faster than models predict.
Arctic sea ice may have passed crucial tipping point – environment – 27 March 2012 – New Scientist

The disappearance of Arctic sea ice has crossed a “tipping point” that could soon make ice-free summers a regular feature across most of the Arctic Ocean, says a British climate scientist who is setting up an early warning system for dangerous climate tipping points.

Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter has carried out a day-by-day assessment of Arctic ice-cover data collected since satellite observation began in 1979. He presented his hotly anticipated findings for the first time at the Planet Under Pressure conference held recently in London.

Other glaciologists would not comment before seeing the details of the analysis, which have yet to be published in a journal. But if the findings are confirmed, they say, the existing models will have to be rewritten.

Up until 2007, sea ice systematically fluctuated between extensive cover in winter and lower cover in summer. But since then, says Lenton, the difference between winter and summer ice cover has been a million square kilometres greater than it was before, as a result of unprecedented summer melting. These observations are in contrast to what models predict should have happened……..

Plot of (probably best estimate available of) development of arctic sea ice volume between 1979 and now as determined by the numerical model PIOMAS. Deutsch: Zeitverlauf der momentan besten Schätzung des Volumens des arktischen Meereseises zwischen 1979 und 2010, wie es durch das numerische Modell PIOMAS bestimmt wurde. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

• Climate: Arctic sea ice peaks for the season (summitcountyvoice.com)
• Arctic warming accelerating according to new report (climatechangehealth.com)
• Arctic sea ice loss tied to unusual jet stream patterns (wunderground.com)
• In a Planet under pressure many Climate Tipping Points have been crossed according to Environmental Parliament (panokroko.wordpress.com)
• Unusual Weather: Arctic Sea Ice Decline May Be Driving Snowy Winters (chimalaya.org)

A great climate change infographic here by the very clever David McCandless (who calls himself an “independent data journalist and information designer). He says that he is “interested in how designed information can help us understand the world, cut through BS and reveal the hidden connections, patterns and stories underneath….” He’s also designed a graphic of sea level rise which I will feature later this week.

An interesting note about this graphic – McCandless writes that he only used publicly-available on-line data to create this graphic, in order to simulate what someone researching this subject for the first time would discover (more below).

Climate Change Deniers vs The Consensus (via Uncharted Atolls blog)

climate change infographic - skeptics vs scientists.

I researched this subject in a very particular way. I deliberately chose not speak directly to any climate experts or leading scientists in the field. I used only publicly available web sources. Why? Because I wanted to simulate what it’s like for people trying to learn about climate change online. My conclusion is “what a nightmare”. I was generally shocked and appalled by how difficult it was to source counter arguments. The data was often tucked away on extremely ancient or byzantine websites. The key counter arguments I often found, 16 scrolls down, on comment 342 on a far flung realclimate.org post from three years ago. And even when I found an answer, the answers were excessively jargonized or technical. Most of the info for this image is sourced from Realclimate.org. It’s an amazing blog staffed tirelessly by some of the world’s leading climatologists.

other version – black text on white background

Related articles

• The Climate Change “Debate” – debate implies we still don’t know (turnleft2013.wordpress.com)
• What goes around comes around to climate denialists (dalehusband.wordpress.com)
• Republican scientists promote climate change to no avail (amanwithaphd.wordpress.com)
• Believing in Climate Change (legalplanet.wordpress.com)

Reported on the SBS website today (in conjunction with the website The Conservation) – A commentary on the first “State Of The Planet Declaration” released at the recent Planet Under Pressure conference. Worth a read

Planet under Pressure 2012: here’s the wrap | SBS World News

The Planet Under Pressure 2012 Conference was held in London a fortnight back and released the first State of the Planet Declaration.

The conference aim was to set out the science (in a broad sense) in the run-up to the UN Rio+20 conference.

The recommendations in the statement have been passed on to the Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, who has agreed to take them on board.

Before commenting on the statement, here’s a gap assessment. Instead of seeing who was present — who was absent? Present were over 3,000 attendees and many more online. The peak global change research organisations were represented.

The patrons of the conference were mostly blokes and mostly Western, despite a very different mix of interested parties at the ground level. Supporters of the conference included scientific, aid and development organisations.

So development interests, gender, poverty and other issues straddling society and environment were present.

Absent were the Davos types: leaders and representatives from the OECD, the IMF, mining companies, and other such powerful economic players……….

Related articles

• This June’s Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil Is an Olympic Challenge the U.S. Can’t Ignore (switchboard.nrdc.org)
• NEWS | The State Of The Planet Declaration (PUP) : “A new contract between science and society” (jpinfluence.com)
• State of the planet (eurekalert.org)
• Rio Summit: Scientists warn of ‘humanitarian emergency on global scale’ (vancouversun.com)
• Scientists warn of “emergency on global scale”..the alarmists want to scare you silly (seeker401.wordpress.com)

Global warming affects Russia more than others – meteorologists — RT

Russia is suffering from global warming more than any other country, say state meteorologists.

The weathermen’s latest report focuses on climate indicators in 2011, as well as on the trends of the last 35 years. The scientists say that climate change in Russia appears to be double that in other countries.

In the last 35 years, the average temperature in Russia went up by 1.5 degrees, while the average figure across the world is 0.8 degrees. “The report shows that global warming is not a gradual process,” said Aleksey Kokorin, the head of WWF Russia climate service. “Although the average temperatures are going up slowly, the temperatures’ actual leaps are 10 times bigger. The number of alarming climate phenomena has gone up by two times.”

Some parts of Russia have shown even worse results. In the Arctic, south Chukotka and the Kamchatka region, the temperatures have risen 1.5 to two times more than in the rest of the country.

Northern Russia's Kamchatka region thawing fast due to global warming

Climate change expert on diminishing ice shelf – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Related articles

• Satellites show rapid disintegration of Larsen ice shelves (summitcountyvoice.com)
• More crack in the Antarctic (wattsupwiththat.com)
• Satellite observes rapid ice shelf disintegration in Antarctic (eurekalert.org)
• Key ice shelf in Antarctica has shrunk by 85 percent – ESA (newsinfo.inquirer.net)
• 1981 Climate Change Predictions Were Eerily Accurate (universetoday.com)

Climate change is often seen as a “psychologically distant problem” (at least in the United States) according to Anthony Leiserowitz, Director of the Yale Project on Climate Communication and reported yesterday at allAfrica.com: Africa: Did You Know That Climate Change Is Bad for Your Health?

It has become mired in debates over the science, the environmental impacts (which have focused on polar bears not people), and domestic and international political squabbling over responsibility for action. “We ignore other frames – especially the health frame – but people do care passionately about this aspect, and it helps to localise the issue,” (Leiserowtz) said; ”The more local you can help people understand the impacts to be, the more likely you are to engage them effectively.”

There is an emerging view that the health effects of climate change have not been emphasised enough in the public debate, according to the article:

There’s certainly a widespread view among experts that heath has not been given the importance it deserves in the climate change arena. “Human health has been largely neglected, if not entirely ignored, in debates about climate change,” Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation. Now that more evidence is available on the existing and expected threats climate change poses to health, it needs to be packaged in a way that influences policy and injects greater urgency into the response, she added.

Climate change (Photo credit: jeancliclac)

One barrier to effectively communicating the climate-health link has been a lack of current data, according to Professor Tony McMichael, a leading exponent of this issue. Until now. According to the article, Prof McMichael says that updated figures are currently being prepared with the aim of being ready for the upcoming Rio+20 summit.

Article Outcome: We should be promoting win-win solutions, like cycling, with benefits for both health and climate. We should also be tailoring the message for specific audiences.